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Anne would be the last person to want me to waste time today talking about her. She wasn’t an argumentative person, but she had a way of speaking that gave you the impression that she’d pronounced the last word on the subject.

On Monday the President of Mexico said, ‘I have sent a letter to the king of Spain and another to the Pope … urging them to apologise to the indigenous peoples for the violations of what we now call their human rights.’ He said there couldn’t be reconciliation until there was forgiveness.

I’ve never had a conversion experience, but the closest I’ve come was in a rather dingy classroom in East London just over a decade ago.  More than a year into my ordination training, I still had no real idea why I was doing it – apart from the fact that all the people who could have prevented it, hadn’t. 

‘Are you a Londoner?’ a journalist asked me last week. I found it a hard question to answer. I grew up in the West Country, although none of my family live there now. I was born in Canada, although my parents weren’t there very long.

Well, when it comes to giving up something for Lent, I didn’t expect to be giving up St Martin’s. It’s a big ask!
Perhaps what I am doing today, with Loren, rather than giving up St Martin’s is ‘disembarking’.

There were fifty young Norwegians in this church yesterday asking me questions about St Martin’s and the question that always gets asked in this church is what does that east window mean? And my answer to those young people was. “What do you think it means? Look and see. There is no explanation better than the experience of you yourself.” When asked what they saw they were full of ideas. What do we see in today’s Gospel? 

We are living in turbulent times. Jean-Claude Junckner, President of the European Commission said this week. ‘When it comes to Brexit, it is like being before the courts or the high seas; we are in God’s hands.

Our Gospel today is from Luke and Jesus is presented at his most outspoken and challenging. He presents us with stark contrasts. First the poor and then the rich. Notice unlike in Matthew’s Gospel he doesn’t say “blessed are the poor in spirit.” He is much more direct than that. He says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.

I want you to imagine that you’re having a bad day. Not the kind of bad day where you lose your keys, leave your phone on the bus, forget to post the red-letter bill payment and spill coffee all over your clothes the moment you get to work. I mean the kind of bad day when the frailty of existence all crowds in on you